


As I Remember You

by NowWeOwnTheNight



Series: Haikyuu!! AUs [9]
Category: Haikyuu!!, [Yurii!!! On Ice but only mentioned]
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Elemental Mages, Fluff, M/M, Shapeshifters - Freeform, VKUSNOOOO, Winged Humans, [and then... wild ones], but idk same-sex is p fair game, death/suicide mentions, domesticated mythological creatures, he loves daichi, he loves him so much, i love magic realism, magical community that coexists with ordinary humans and is pretty divided/'traditional', mainly daichi, makkachin is a semargl end me, minimal angst yes, much better, prejudice and hate against inter-elemental relationships, reminiscing on his childhood and daichi, someone save this poor flower, star deities, suga is keeping a journal basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 23:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8867308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NowWeOwnTheNight/pseuds/NowWeOwnTheNight
Summary: ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I hardly got the chance to ask before he was kissing me senseless against some stranger’s car, autumn just starting to close up and make way for a harsh winter. His lips were freezing, and I’m sure mine were too, but inside I was warmer than I had been in years.Despite being a damn Fire Mage, Daichi never bothered to focus on evening his temperature. Just another thing I love about him, I suppose.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Daichi and Suga are ex-neighbors who fell in kinda-love, got split up, and then meet up later in life and are even more in love and end me this might have the least angst ever for an idea im so invested in 
> 
> I know the P!ATD song is more ‘lol I fucked u but aaaa life is a mess and wow now u r so popular n achieving ur dreams haha do u even remember me’ but ? these witch-children are innocent, let them be, they finally meet again in a spells store and move in together and life is great

+-+-+

 

~~Hello there!!! It’s Halloween and I want to die!!!!~~

~~Heya, welcome to the shitfight that is Sugawara Koushi’s brain~~

~~~laaa laaa lalala laaaa la laaaaa lalala laaaaaaaaa~~

~~Kill m e I’m sick of this stupid song fuck please neighbors shut up aaaaaaa~~

~~… uhhhhmmmm~~

Sup.

I’m sad and alone and university has just started and I already _hate_ it. It’s raining buckets, boatloads, ocean-loads- if such a measurement exists –and I’m feeling sick to my stomach.

I don’t know why, but I do.

And it’s shit.

My brain won’t turn off, and _oh look_ it isn’t Halloween anymore!! It is now November, fucking _hooray_. Yes, yes, I can hear you, cheering in the street. I'm as happy as you re for a new month.

This area of Tokyo is so damn loud around any calendar event. Guess that’s what I get, going for the cheapest of cheap.

Oh well.

As I said, I can’t stop thinking- even after drowning out the celebrations with more music. I’m half-tempted to put myself inside a water bubble and try to create a sensory deprivation bath- not sure whether it’d still hold when I pass out or get high or do whatever you do in a sensory deprivation bath… Do you have to take drugs beforehand? LSD, right? Do I even have LSD? Someone in my building probably does. It wouldn’t hurt to ask around, right? I could always beg an Electric Mage to fry my brain, I know there are a lot in this building, with the fucking incessant power outages-

No- _focus_ , Suga.

 _See_? Do you see what I’m dealing with, here?! My mind is _everywhere_ ; jumping between insane ideas for helping me ignore the noise, and these weird, cringe worthy potholes down memory lane. Fuck Daichi. Fuck my parents. Fuck.

Everything.

Rain doesn’t help, right, because it was always raining- in every memory of my childhood- in every memory of _our_ childhood, almost _every single one_ , it would be raining…

 

Rain never seemed to stop, when we were young.

It could have been my mother’s dragon. He’s a Water breed to match my family power, of course. The little guy was always running around, leaving puddles and selective deluges like those personal rainclouds you see in cartoons. In more than one instance of heavy rain, I would find the creature on our roof, yipping up at the sky and bringing down hell from the heavens. So much power in such tiny little things. That’s just the domesticated dragon breeds, of course- the wild ones, _well_. They’re another story entirely. Hakuu is a mere garden-variety Water-bound. Always getting in to fights with other Water-bound creatures on our block, like the Haruka family’s unicorn, or the Katsuki couple’s semargl. My mother always told me to stay away from those two, but I thought they are perfectly nice. Still do, really- for _evident_ reasons. Yuuri-san and his foreign partner are fascinating people, and just as in love- if not _more_ in love –as my parents have ever been. They always gave our volleyballs back when we’d accidentally lose them over their fence; not like mean old Kobayashi who hid them in his garage, who also yelled insults at the Katsukis whenever they went out for a run or walk with their pet. At least I’d know they were outside whenever that old fart started up, so I knew I could go out and play with their semargl, Makkachin. A winged wolf bound to Yuuri-san’s Water powers even though he’d been domesticated by Victor years before they met. He is to this day _the_ friendliest beast I’ve ever met, probably due to the personalities of his owners. No one is quite as in love as the Katsukis. No one I’ve seen, at least, in both the small town of dense families and strong blood, and in my thus-far short time living in the big city of Tokyo.

That’s another possible reason why: our neighborhood was constantly under-fire from the Powers, disappointed in the ‘heretical’ bond between Yuuri-san’s Water-bound blood and Victor’s Wind-bound blood. Even the fact that Daichi’s family, the Sawamuras, was living in a predominantly Water-bound area could’ve set such an unbalance in the Powers.

Or maybe it was the Rain Man, the wizard at the end of the street who taught me how to cast tiny fire charms, ones even the littlest of children could manage. He listened to those ’10 Hour Relaxing Thunderstorm’ tracks, had them on whenever we went to visit him, and continued to teach me in my Water-bound ways all the way through both middle and high school. I was told that there had never been a more accomplished Elemental Mage than I, in every grade I graduated from. For all his fumbles and singed hair, the Rain Man persisted in teaching Daichi the technique of the fiery blood in his system. Laughing, always laughing, and insisting that we were born the wrong way around: my temperament satisfied the needs of Fire-bound and his followed that typical of the Water-bound- making him the black sheep of his family as well as the general populace of Fire-bounds.

Mother always ordered takeaway on Fridays, and I ordered Daichi to come over each time. Daichi _loved_ takeaway- he definitely still does, I get _‘stop me I’m too fat’_ texts _all_ the time, followed minutes later by a picture of cheeseburger wrappers- _so many_ cheeseburgers, honestly, it’s disgusting -strewn across his fucking chiseled abs. Asshole. He could eat twenty tubs of ice-cream and not pack on a single pound of fat. Fucking Fire Bloods and their insane metabolisms.

His family practically forbade it in their house. ‘ _Home cooked meals only, Sawamura, that’s the only way you’ll grow into a strong, respectable man’_ , said his father when he caught us munching on fried chicken in the backyard one evening. He’d say it was bad for your powers, for your health, would make your brow greasy and pimply and your stomach large and your teeth yellow, rotten.

Now, when I say _young_ , I don’t mean five or six- the age where you chase fireflies after sundown and water-bend the bubblers at school and climb trees and make-believe pirate ships or animals or secret agents or domestics. We were in late middle school, and _yes_ , although we felt adultish and tall, we’d only just learnt the difference between kissing your mother and kissing your lover and, honestly, isn’t that such a _dumb_ thing that adults worried about? Their kids having sex, not having sex, having sex with the right people? One would think that, even with Elemental blood, there would be bigger things to worry over. But, no.

Sex, it’s all _‘what time are you home tonight’_ , and _‘he’s a little old, don’t you think, Kou-chan… A little old for you to be hanging around with so much… Hm.’,_ and ‘ _you better not stay over at Nanase’s for the night, we have her parent’s number [for the last time, mother, Nanase Haruka is a b o y]’_ , and ‘ _that Tanaka seems like a bad kid, Koushi, stay away from him, you know how Electrics get with Water-bound kids’._

 _Stupid_ things- parents worried about stupid things. Why were we supposed care?

The age of sex: puberty, a curse and a blessing to teenagers everywhere, magic-filled veins or not.

Sex was a big issue, with us.

Not _us_ , not me and Daichi, no. Never. We matured together, we explored together, and we explored each other. Daichi had a girlfriend for a while; he said it didn’t feel right. It always felt like black magic, between us, though. Where everyone saw the kind of things we did as _evil_ and a _sin_ \- fuck, it was sinful- we couldn’t get enough of each other, physically and mentally.

Daichi’s parents made it clear that if he ever had a girl over, the bedroom door was to stay _open at all times_. But he and I- that was _free fucking game_ : doors closed, windows drawn, loud music. We were even allowed to stay together, alone, in his house when his parents went for business trips or vacations.

‘Soul mates’ has never been a concept that appealed to me, and I doubt it ever will be. For all the magic in the world, fate would be fitting, you’d believe. I believe, at least. A little.

But what else do you call it, when you’re wholly comfortable with another person in every way possible? Platonically, romantically, sexually- formally, informally, ritually- in playgrounds or alchemy class or family dinners or dark bedrooms where the only light is the muted TV and the only sounds are muted moans and rustling sheets. Inseparable- that’s how everyone knew us. ‘Look at them’, kids would say, teachers would say, strangers would say, all at their different pitches and levels and tones of accusation, ‘they’re practically married!’

 _‘Fate is never a straight line’,_ my mother always said.

It’s a poignant impoliteness tossed like a stick into the wheels of life. I could go on and make a pun on us being _incredibly not-straight_ … Except, that would last too many pages and everyone would get bored. So, no. The thing with fate, I’ve come to realise, is that it doesn’t work out the way you expect, but it does work out the way you want it to. There are the tiny things that work out and make you happy, and there are larger things the send you over-the-moon. As soon as something goes wrong, however, the earth turns its back on you and you’re left out in the cold, left hanging for a relief that never comes. And when it does, it’s never in at the right bar. It’s a bit of a patchwork- fate, if it _does_ exist –and turns us into people of its own image.

You just… May not realise it until it’s happening.

Or until it’s gone.

 

But- sex _was an issue_ \- not our powers, not our _feelings_ -and I think that’s why his family packed up before our second year of high school began, and Daichi casually dropped that he’d be going with them on their holiday.

And then he never came back.

 

 

So here I sit, and here I’ll return next year. If I remember.

The street is quieter, now- the rain is still going.

Hopefully I’ll sleep for a while…

 

+-+-+

 

Hi, again!!!!!!!!!!!!

I now realise that I’d ‘forgotten’ about this completely. Not even the mad Halloween celebrations were enough to jog my memory- heck, the past few years have been _mad_ , crazy busy… And I only just ‘remembered’ it now, because…

Guess who hand me my own fucking book?

Turns out, I never had this journal with me! _Surprise suprise_ , because _someone_ somehow shifted it to his home in Kyoto without me knowing.

And has drawn stupid things all over it.

And has used pages for study notes.

And added commentary to my only entry with gel pens in… Russian? Yeah, that’s definitely Russian. Like, I’m glad he’s keeping in touch with our childhood neighbors, but come _on_ , what the fuck even _is_ Russian? Runes? _Elvish_? He’s written fucking ‘BKYCHO’ along the top margin of every page? Why? _Why_ do I love this man so much??

Thanks, Dai.

So, here goes:

 

Call it magic, but it really feels like it’s going to work.

Beautiful, respectable, resilient.

That’s him.

That’s Daichi.

The Rain Man writes to me every few weeks, always with a new charm to try or amulet to use or ways to cast certain spells with expertise. He asks after Daichi often. I’m excited to tell him that I now know _exactly_ where he is.

I wonder what element the Rain Man is, to be able to change between fire and water, now that I’ve studied it more.

I wonder how he’s doing, between writings. At an age over two hundred, surely he must be beginning to fade.

Most of all, I’m glad he doesn’t have to wonder about Daichi anymore- I’ll have him writing the Rain Man a letter tomorrow, just you wait. When I mentioned him to Daichi, he laughs, _‘that old man’s still around, that’s awesome! I wonder if he can help me with my trail spells- oh, oh, and my stupid temp charm on this thing keeps fluctuating too much, you wouldn’t believe how many burns I’ve got from the fucking thing’_ , showing me a little fake amulet I remember giving him as a gag gift in high school.

We are both in our third year of University- Daichi’s studying Dark-strand Alchemy, I’d changed from Herbology to Magical Teaching in my first year when I finally found the strength to say _‘screw you, dad, I’m being a teacher and you can’t stop me!!’_

No, really. Believe it or not, I can stand up for myself and chase my dreams.

… Okay. I faked my death and have been holding an illusion charm over my appearance in public ever since, entering university as an overseas student with a fake persona and backstory.

Kidding!

I broke the agreement I had with my parents and changed my course to something they didn’t approve of, causing them to stop their fortnightly ‘assistance payouts’ to my account. Not even a semester in, too. _For shame, Koushi, for shame_ , my mother chided me after her fair share of yelling and my hardly fair share of crying.

Magical parents have this stereotype of being laid-back and calm about everything. Moongazers... But that’s just the standouts- the Sky Mages, like Asahi Azumane, a boy who shares my course classes. He has his bond with some small guardian deity in the stars, speaks slow and quiet with a far-away smile on his face, rambling on and on about stars like it’s the only important thing in the universe; just like how people used be to up until the Eighteenth Century, when Powers started becoming more conventional and we relied less on the stars and more on our hearts, our minds.

Guess me and Dai lucked out, in the parents department.

Living alone had been tough at first, but Daichi texted me constantly. That alone sustained me. That… And a _lot_ of microwavable meals. We slowed down in the years after he moved away, both of us struggling to finish high school and settle to the beat of university alone, without each other. Then he’d been texting me regularly about Kyoto once we regained our wits, yet he always found an excuse to be out of town whenever I had an excursion there.

Getting back together, meeting up in the wizarding underground of Tokyo’s western suburbs, was _horrifying_. I have no breath for words and no words for it.

The distance made it stronger. Fuck, missing him made me want him more… I’ve built up enough want to slowly burn over the course of a few lifetimes.

In a weird little circle of its own, sex became _an issue_ for me as I grew up and moved out. I ran in to my cut of shitty girls, guys that only wanted attention, those who were only after arm candy or money or someone to drown in for a night or two. No one could ever compare, I discovered. Not even the _good_ ones could satisfy me. Regular humans feel dull- unpowered, their emotions coming across as empty, lacking. _Any_ of the Shifter-types are just fucking _odd_ , especially when it comes to sexual relationships. _Way_ too possessive. Of course, there are the Winged, but… I don’t like to think about Oikawa too much- I am _scarred for life,_ I tell you. Polyamory may be a _thing_ in their Nests, but it is not _my thing_ , no thank you, not at all. Most Wind-bounds are weird with their affections; as a rule, Sky Bloods are way too meek and gentle. Neither the Electric-bound- so _that’s_ why mother wanted me to stay away from Tanaka –nor the familiar Fire-bound courtships could do it for me. Once I’d had a taste of it, of Daichi, everything else was poisoned- ash, in my hands, in my mouth, rough-to-touch, their voices unaccustomed enough to make me jump.

But do you want to know what _really_ made me jump? Turning a corner in the Fire Spells store under my apartment complex at eleven at night, crashing right in to the person I’d been texting.

‘ _Aren’t you supposed to be in Kyoto?’_ I had asked.

‘ _I was going to surprise you!’_ He had wailed, ‘ _And look at this, you fucked it up, bastard!_ ’

We got kicked out of the shop for causing a scene and yelling at one another- jokingly, too in-shock to make ourselves _hug_ or _say hello_ or respond in a _ordinary-person_ way –and proceeded to laugh ourselves in to the curb at how damn _stupid_ we are.

 _‘Why didn’t you tell me?_ ’ I hardly got the chance to ask before he was kissing me senseless against some stranger’s car, autumn just starting to close up and make way for a harsh winter. His lips were freezing, and I’m sure mine were too, but inside I was warmer than I had been in years.

Despite being a damn Fire Mage, Daichi never bothered to focus on evening his temperature. Just another thing I love about him, I suppose.

 _‘I had to talk to you face to face’,_ he whispered. I linked our arms and walked him through the tiny side-door and up the many, many stairs to my apartment level.

_‘There’s a thing called Skype, you know.’_

_‘It’s not the same, Suga…’_

_‘… You got a place to stay?’_

_‘… Do I?’_

I had to pause again, relying on Daichi to hold me up as I giggled, nearly falling down a flight of stairs.

Good thing he’s great at that- holding me up, in more ways than one.

_‘You came here without even booking a hotel?! What if I had said no!?’_

_‘… I was sure you’d say yes.’_

_‘Bold as ever, Sawamura…’_

_‘I’m only bold when it’s about you, you know…’_

_‘That’s not true-’_

_‘I’m only truly bold around you, how’s that?’_

_‘Much better.’_

_‘Hm, guess I better stick around you for a while, then?’_

… Much, much better.

Dorky, sexy, awkward and charming in devastating equipoise- that’s _my_ Daichi.

He’d pull in droplet after droplet through the cracks of the windowpane and watch me warp them into tiny little animal figures, stars and snowflake patterns, and he’d keep us warm with the levitating flame spell I bought for him, intended to be mailed to his post box as a New Years gift. My own bag, packed and ready for a trip to Kyoto, lay forgotten at the foot of my dresser. He chucks his on top of it and laughs at me, saying something about how like-minded we are.

We’d sit inside and eat takeaway from the shop under our apartment, the rain keen to burn all our plans on its never-ending pour.

 

+-+-+

 

\- A.A.

[Suga you can’t _do my assignment for me_ , stop making me write about him]

[(･ω<)☆ ~S]

**Author's Note:**

> d o n e


End file.
